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Listening is the act of attention to . It includes listening to the sounds of nature, listening to music, and perhaps most importantly, interpersonal listening, i.e. listening to other human beings. When listening to another person, one Hearing what they are Speech and tries to understand what it means.
Interpersonal listening involves complex affective, Cognition, and behavioral processes. Affective processes include the motivation to listen to others; cognitive processes include Attention, understanding, receiving, and interpreting content and relational messages; and behavioral processes include responding to others with verbal and nonverbal feedback.
Interpersonal listening is a skill for Problem solving. Poor interpersonal listening can lead to misinterpretations, thus causing conflict or dispute. Poor listening can be exhibited by excessive interruptions, inattention, hearing what you want to hear, mentally composing a response, or having a closed mind.
Listening is also linked to memory. According to one study, when there were background noises during a speech, listeners were better able to recall the information in the speech when hearing those noises again. For example, when a person reads or does something else while listening to music, he or she can recall what that was when hearing the music again later.
Listening can also function as a means of promoting Cross-cultural communication. Krista Ratcliffe (author of "Rhetorical Listening and Cross - Cultural Communication")
Listening differs from obeying. A person who receives and understands information or an instruction, and then chooses not to comply with it or not to agree to it, has listened to the speaker, even though the result is not what the speaker wanted. (1997). 9780761804611, University Press of America. ISBN 9780761804611
People listen for 45 percent of their time when they communicate.
According to Barthes, listening can be understood on three levels: alerting, deciphering, and understanding how the sound is produced and how it affects the listener.
All three levels of listening , and sometimes all at once. The second and third levels overlap and intertwine, in that obtaining, understanding, and deriving meaning are part of the same process. In this way anyone, on hearing a doorknob turn (obtaining), can almost automatically assume that someone is at the door (deriving meaning).
Active listening is an exchange between two or more individuals. If they are active listeners, the quality of the conversation will be better and clearer. Active listeners connect with each other more efficiently in their conversations. Active listening can create a deeper, more positive relationship between individuals.
Active listening changes the speaker's perspective. Active listening is a catalyst in one's personal growth, which enhances personality change and group development. People will more likely listen to themselves if someone else is allowing them to speak and get their message across.
Active listening allows people to be present in a conversation. "Listening is a key factor in cultivating relationships because the more we understand the other person, the more connection we create, as taught in nonviolent-communication Dharma teachings. As someone recently stated, 'We should listen harder than we speak.'"
In "intensive listening" learners attempt to listen with maximum accuracy to a relatively brief sequence of speech; in "extensive listening" learners listen to lengthy passages for general comprehension. While intensive listening may be more effective for developing specific aspects of listening ability, extensive listening is more effective in building fluency and maintaining learner motivation.
People are usually not conscious of how they listen in their first, or native, language unless they encounter difficulty. A research project focused on facilitating language learning found that L2 (second language) learners, in the process of listening, make conscious use of whatever strategies they unconsciously use in their first language, such as inferring, selective attention, or evaluation.
Factors activated in speech perception include phonetic quality, prosodic patterns, pausing, and speed of input. These all influence the comprehensibility of listening input. A common store of semantic information in memory is used in both first- and second-language speech comprehension, but research has found separate stores of phonological information for speech. Semantic knowledge required for language understanding (scripts and schemata related to real-world people, places, and actions) is accessed through phonological tagging of whatever language is heard.
In a study, involving 93 participants, investigating the relationship between second-language listening and a range of tasks, it was discovered that listening anxiety was a major obstacle to developing speed and explicitness in second-language listening tasks. Additional research explored whether listening anxiety and comprehension are related, and as the investigators expected they were negatively correlated.
Shari Stenberg extended this perspective to explicate the absence of listening in the academe.
Western teaching methods maintained the inherited rhetorical Greek noun , which means reasoning and logic, while ignoring its verb that refers to speaking as well as, in etymological term, to lay down, to listen. Listening may occur within two different stances: the divided logos and the restored logos. These differ in how they (re)shape the functions and outcomes of listening. The hearer listens in the divided logos while simultaneously producing their responses to the speaker. Whereas within the restored logos, the listener exploits the listening time empathy, then reflect on, and make meanings, to offer a response.
An example of divided logos was Aristotle's theory. Despite its concern with teaching students the oral discourse that mandates listening to produce and analyze , listening was displaced and diminished. The attention given to speaking without listening "perpetuates a homogenized mode of speech based on competition rather than dialogue." Ratcliffe attributed this listening neglect to Western cultural biases that are represented as: 1) speaking is gendered as masculine while listening as feminine; 2) Listening is subjugated to ethnicity: white people speak while people of color listen; in other words, in cross-cultural relationships, there is one superior member in the conversation who does not need to listen as closely; 3) Western culture prefers to depend on sight, not sound, as its primary interpretative trope.
Steven Pedersen highlights the negative impact on communication of stereotypes and prejudices, which cause dis-identification. Conversely, rhetorical listening promotes cross-cultural understanding and allows students and teachers to disrupt reciprocal resistance.
Rhetorical listening requires an attentive consideration of individuals' intentions to seek understanding, which surpasses mere passive listening. Stenberg cautioned against interpretative limitations that may arise from such intentions. Within the framework of rhetorical listening, the term "understanding" metaphorically transforms into "standing under"—encompassing a comprehensive view of various perspectives. This vantage point allows for the (re)conceptualization of one's own ideas and ethics. Instead of merely accumulating others' ideas, people cultivate these ideas, thereby enhancing their language skills and evolving their perspectives, ultimately paving the way for new .
Another strategy for teachers to practice rhetorical listening and improve cultural sensitivity in the classroom is by applying practices from Deaf studies. This kind of listening pedagogy requires students (1) to be attentive and reduce distracting noises; (2) share their story, including their cultural background, so that classmates can be familiar with their perspective; (3) engage in “critical dialogue” in order to understand others; and (4) pay attention to their classmates’ body language and the messages it sends.
Rhetorical listening in the classroom can also be used to shed more light onto why students are silent. Janice Cools discusses several reasons for silence in the ESL/ELL composition classroom, such as students holding back their wisdom on purpose to avoid being harassed by peers and instructors for giving a wrong answer. The fear and doubt that can result from this type of response might lead to feelings of incompetence and discomfort in an individual and cause them to continue in silence in the classroom. A further reason why students choose silence is because they were taught to be silent, especially at the secondary school level in some cultures, e.g. Puerto Rico.
Cools suggests asking students in writing why they are (not) silent in their classes, "how they interpret other students' silences ... and what a professor should infer from students' silence." Students have told her that silence can be beneficial as it shows their focus on the material, gives them an opportunity to get to know a different perspective while listening to their peers, and allows them to reflect and process questions. Moreover, discussions can be perceived as interruption because classmates do not have expert knowledge. Cools concludes that silence in the classroom should be appreciated and respected.
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